Mystery film

Nick Carter, from France, is one of the first mystery-detective film series (1908–1909).

A mystery film is a genre of film that revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of an issue by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.

The plot often centers on the deductive ability, prowess, confidence, or diligence of the detective as they attempt to unravel the crime or situation by piecing together clues and circumstances, seeking evidence, interrogating witnesses, and tracking down a criminal.

Suspense is often maintained as an important plot element. This can be done through the use of the soundtrack, camera angles, heavy shadows, and surprising plot twists. Alfred Hitchcock used all of these techniques, but would sometimes allow the audience in on a pending threat then draw out the moment for dramatic effect.

This genre has ranged from early mystery tales, fictional or literary detective stories, to classic Hitchcockian suspense-thrillers to classic private detective films. A related film subgenre is spy films.[1]

Mystery films mainly focus with solving a crime or a puzzle. The mystery generally revolves around a murder which must then be solved by policemen, private detectives, or amateur sleuths. The viewer is presented with a series of likely suspects, some of whom are "red herrings," –persons who have motive to commit the crime but did not actually do it–, and attempts to solve the puzzle along with the investigator. At times the viewer is presented with information not available to the main character. The central character usually explores the unsolved crime, unmasks the perpetrator, and puts an end to the effects of the villainy.[2]

The successful mystery film adheres to one of two story types, known as Open and Closed. The Closed (or whodunit) mystery conceals the identity of the perpetrator until late in the story, adding an element of suspense during the apprehension of the suspect, as the audience is never quite sure who it is. The Open mystery, in contrast, reveals the identity of the perpetrator at the top of the story, showcasing the "perfect crime" which the audience then watches the protagonist unravel, usually at the very end of the story, akin to the unveiling scenes in the Closed style.

Mystery novels have proven to be a good medium for translation into film. The sleuth often forms a strong leading character, and the plots can include elements of drama, suspense, character development, uncertainty and surprise twists. The locales of the mystery tale are often of a mundane variety, requiring little in the way of expensive special effects. Successful mystery writers can produce a series of books based on the same sleuth character, providing rich material for sequels.

Until at least the 1980s, women in mystery films have often served a dual role, providing a relationship with the detective and frequently playing the part of woman-in-peril. The women in these films are often resourceful individuals, being self-reliant, determined and as often duplicitous. They can provide the triggers for the events that follow, or serve as an element of suspense as helpless victims.

The earliest true mystery films include The Gold Bug (1910), also from France, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1914). Both are derived from stories by Edgar Allan Poe, which is appropriate as Poe is often credited with creating modern detective fiction as well as the first private detective character, C. Auguste Dupin. Universal Pictures renamed him Pierre Dupin in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), an atmospheric horror-mystery starring Bela Lugosi. The film was remade twice more in 1953 and 1971. Poe's second Dupin story, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, was filmed in 1942. More recently, The Raven (2012) presented a fictionalized account of the last days of Poe's life. Here, the author pursues a mysterious serial killer whose murders are directly inspired by his stories.

Undoubtedly the most famous of the amateur detectives to appear on the silver screen is the archetypal Sherlock Holmes. Since 1903 Holmes has been portrayed by a multitude of actors in over 200 films. Perhaps the earliest detective comedy is Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924). Until recently, the only American-made series starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Dr. Watson. Together they made 14 films between 1939 and 1946. The first two, at 20th Century Fox, were period piece mysteries set in the late-Victorian era of the original stories. By the third film, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), now taken up by Universal Studios, Holmes was updated to the present day. Several films dealt with World War II and thwarting Nazi spies.

Doubleday's The Crime Club imprint published a variety of mystery novels that also inspired a radio show. Universal Pictures struck a deal to produce a series of 11 Crime Club mystery films released from 1937 to 1939. These include The Westlake Case (1937) and Mystery of the White Room (1939).

The Thin Man series combined elements of the screwball comedy film within a complex murder mystery plot.

A few silent Charlie Chan films, now lost, were produced in the 1920s. Starting in 1929, the B-picture unit at Fox Film Corporation (later part of 20th Century Fox) began a series of 28 commercially successful Charlie Chan films. (Monogram Pictures continued the series from 1944 to 1949 with 17 more entries.) The success of the Chan films led Fox to hire exiled actor Peter Lorre to play Japanese sleuth Mr. Moto in 8 films from 1937 to 1939. Monogram responded by creating their own gentlemanly Oriental detective, Mr. Wong, adapted from a Hugh Wiley story. Beginning with Mr. Wong, Detective, Boris Karloff played Wong in 5 of 6 films produced from 1938 to 1941.

Over at Warner Brothers studios, the Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner were faithfully adapted into a series of six films from 1934 to 1937. Most of these placed the crusading attorney in a standard murder mystery whodunit story. Warner Bros. also created the Torchy Blane films which were notable for featuring one of the few female sleuths in a series. Starting with Smart Blonde, Glenda Farrell played the brassy, mystery-solving news reporter in 8 of 9 films made between 1936 and 1939. Another novel film is When Were You Born (1938) with Chinese actress Anna May Wong as an astrologer who helps solve a murder using her star-gazing talents.

The Philo Vance detective novels by S. S. Van Dine inspired 15 feature films released from 1929 to 1947. The Canary Murder Case (1929), starring William Powell as Vance, has been called the first modern detective film. Initially made as a silent movie, it was converted into a talkie halfway through production. (Co-star Louise Brooks was blacklisted by Paramount Pictures after famously refusing to return to Hollywood to dub her dialog.) Powell played the suave New York detective in the first three films. A pre-Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone played Vance in the 4th movie. Powell returned once more for the fifth feature, the highly regarded The Kennel Murder Case (1933) produced by Warner Brothers.

Many of the films of this period, including the Thin Man series, concluded with an explanatory detective dénouement that quickly became a cinematic (and literary) cliche. With the suspects gathered together, the detective would dramatically announce that "The killer is in this very room!" before going over the various clues that revealed the identity of the murderer.

The 1930s was the era of the elegant gentleman detective who solved drawing-room whodunit murders using his wits rather than his fists. Most were well-to-do amateur sleuths who solved crimes for their own amusement, carried no weapons, and often had quirky or eccentric personality traits. This type of crime-fighter fell out of fashion in the 1940s as a new breed of tough, hardboiled professional private detectives based on the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and an ensuing slew of imitators were adapted to film.

With the onset of World War II, crime films and melodramas in particular suddenly took on a dark mood of cynicism and despair that had not existed in the optimistic 1930s. Eventually, this cycle of films (which cuts across several genres) would be called film noir by French film critics. Pessimistic, unheroic stories about greed, lust, and cruelty became central to the mystery genre. Grim, violent films featuring cynical, trenchcoat-wearing private detectives who were almost as ruthless as the criminals they pursued became the industry standard. The wealthy, aristocratic sleuth of the previous decade was replaced by the rough-edged, working-class gumshoe. Humphrey Bogart became the definitive cinema shamus as Sam Spade in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1941) and as Philip Marlowe in Chandler's The Big Sleep (1946). Dick Powell also made an indelible impression as Marlowe in the classic Murder, My Sweet (1944), adapted from Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. The Falcon Takes Over (1942), starring George Sanders, was also based on the same novel.

The popular radio show The Whistler was turned into a series of 8 mystery films from 1944 to 1948. Richard Dix would introduce the stories and alternate between playing a hero, a villain, or a victim of circumstance. In Mysterious Intruder (1946), he was a private eye. It was one of the few series to gain acceptance with the public and critics alike. Another radio drama, I Love a Mystery (1939–1944), about a private detective agency, inspired three films starring Jim Bannon. I Love A Mystery (1945), The Devil's Mask and The Unknown (both 1946) combined offbeat murder mystery stories with atmospheric horror elements.

Perhaps the last word in this subgenre is D.O.A. (1950), where a man dying from a slow-acting poison has to solve his own murder in the hours he has left. This film was remade in 1969 as Color Me Dead and again as D.O.A. in 1988.

Agatha Christie's novel Ten Little Indians (1939, originally Ten Little Niggers, later changed again to And Then There Were None) presented the concept of a mysterious killer preying on a group of strangers trapped at an isolated location (in this case, Indian Island). This was made into And Then There Were None (1945), directed by the French exile René Clair. Three more film versions, all titled Ten Little Indians, were released in 1965, 1974, and 1989 along with the 1987 Russian film Desyat Negrityat.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a neo-noir resurgence of the hardboiled detective film (and gritty police drama), based on the classic films of the past. These fall into three basic categories: modern updates of old films and novels, atmospheric period piece films set in the 1930s and 1940s, and new, contemporary detective stories that pay homage to the past.

The many period films set in the 1930s and 1940s are led by Roman Polanski's classic Chinatown (1974) starring Jack Nicholson and its belated sequel, The Two Jakes (1990), which Nicholson also directed. Robert Mitchum played Marlowe for the first time in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), perhaps the most faithful adaptation of this often-filmed book. The obscure Chandler (1972) is set in the 1940s but has nothing to do with Raymond Chandler's writings. The television film Goodnight, My Love (1972) with Richard Boone and two short-lived TV series, Banyon (1972–73) and City of Angels (1976) were also set in the 1930s and pay tribute to the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe model. And the television film Who Is the Black Dahlia? (1975) recreates the true unsolved murder case from 1947.

The New Wave of modern detective films may well begin with Jean-Luc Godard's offbeat Alphaville (1965) with its traditional, raincoat-and-fedora private eye placed in a futuristic, science fiction-based story. The film is part homage, part parody of the detective genre. Godard followed this with Made in U.S.A. (1966), an ironic, unconventional murder mystery of sorts that lightly references the Howard Hawks classic The Big Sleep.

Brick (2005), written and directed by Rian Johnson, is a unique homage bordering on parody which brings the terse, slang-filled dialog of Raymond Chandler to a modern-day California high school where a teenage sleuth investigates a murder connected to a drug ring.

In the 1960s amnesia stories had a resurgence in the mystery-thriller genre. Here the protagonist loses his pre-existing memories after some mental or physical trauma and embarks on a quest to recover his identity. At the same time he finds himself at the center of a mysterious conspiracy involving murder, espionage, or both. Films in this category include Mirage with Gregory Peck, The Third Day starring George Peppard, the British film Hysteria from Hammer Films (all from 1965), Mister Buddwing (1966) with James Garner, and Jigsaw (1968), a remake of Mirage.

In Italy, a new type of controversial horror-based thriller called the Giallo film (which began in the 1960s) became a popular and influential genre by the early 1970s. Films in this category range from police procedurals to gothic horror. The stories tend to center around a series of grisly murder sequences with shocking grand guignol style gore, sometimes mixed with sadistic eroticism (the victims often being beautiful women). The villains are usually mysterious, psychopathic serial killers (often wearing masks or disguises) who are eventually hunted down by the police and/or an average person turned sleuth. The first important film in this genre is Blood and Black Lace (1964) directed by Mario Bava.

One mystery film stands out in a category by itself. Michelangelo Antonioni's provocative Blowup (1966) is a unique anti-whodunit symbolizing the aimless hedonism of the 1960s. A swinging London photographer uncovers clues to a murder, but solving the crime is rendered irrelevant in a society where no one really cares. This contrasts sharply with the ending of The Maltese Falcon where Sam Spade solves the murder of his partner, Miles Archer. He sacrifices the woman he's fallen for, not because he was fond of Archer (he wasn't), but because it's the right thing to do.

In 1981, Brian De Palma remade this as Blow Out, turning it into a more traditional political thriller. In the DVD audio commentary for The Conversation, director Francis Ford Coppola revealed that Blowup was a major source of inspiration for that film.

Electra Glide in Blue (1973) is another rare example of a murder-mystery plot used as a vehicle for a story concerning greater issues. In this case, disillusionment and the death of dreams and idealism in a world full of immorality.

Raymond Chandler's original Philip Marlowe short stories from the '30s (which he later expanded into novels) were adapted by the HBO cable network into eleven one-hour episodes for cable television. The series, Philip Marlowe: Private Eye (1983–1986), starred Powers Boothe as the hard-bitten detective.

Films with female detectives have not fared well. Kathleen Turner as private eye V.I. Warshawski (1991), was to be the start of a new franchise based on the book series by Sara Paretsky, but the film was a box-office failure. Plans to turn the Honey West novels into a film have been in and out of development for over a decade with no film in sight.

Since 1980, ten films based on the ever-popular novels of Agatha Christie have been released. Two with eccentric sleuth Hercule Poirot, Evil Under the Sun (1982), Appointment with Death (1988), and one with Miss Marple The Mirror Crack'd (1980). Christie herself became the subject of a mystery film in 1979's Agatha starring Vanessa Redgrave. The film was a fictional speculation on her famous 11-day disappearance in 1926.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, many horror films and thrillers started to blend mystery and suspense into stories centered around clever, sociopathic serial killers or various mysterious supernatural occurrences. The Hannibal Lecter novels by Thomas Harris have inspired four films, Manhunter (1986), the Academy Award-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hannibal (2001), and Red Dragon (2002).

The 2007 film Zodiac is an account of the real hunt for a serial killer in the San Francisco area in the late-1960s and early 1970s. Contemporary real-life serial killings have been portrayed in The Alphabet Killer, Ed Gein, Gacy, Ted Bundy and Dahmer. The French period-piece film Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) examines a series of killings that took place in France in the 18th century.

In many modern day mystery films, everyday characters (such as fathers, mothers, teens, businesspeople, etc.) are dragged into a dangerous conflict or a mysterious situation, either by fate or their own curiosity. Common elements in these stories include searching for a missing person (a friend or family member) as in Flightplan (2005) with Jodie Foster, while being surrounded by red herrings, espionage, criminal or political conspiracies, and friends/relatives with a secret past or a double life.

Raymond Chandler's final unfinished novel, Poodle Springs, from 1958, was completed by another author and made into an HBO cable film in 1998. Set in 1963, it stars James Caan as Philip Marlowe.

Among the few nostalgia-based comedy-mysteries are the board game-inspired Clue (1985), set in 1954, and Radioland Murders (1994), which recreates the era of old-time radio programs and pays homage to 1930s screwball comedies. Larry Blamire's Dark and Stormy Night (2009), set in 1930, spoofs the cliched characters and plot elements of vintage "old dark house" murder mysteries.

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), set in Los Angeles c. 1948, features an African-American private eye. The film captures the atmosphere of the hard-boiled detective stories of the past as well as the racial climate of the times.

Coming full circle, Robert Altman's nostalgic Gosford Park (2001), set in an English mansion in 1932, is an original story that revives the old-fashioned murder mystery format.

By the 1970s and 1980s, detective and mystery stories began to appear in other genres, sometimes as the framing device for a horror, fantasy or science fiction film or placed in an earlier, nontraditional time period.

Hec Ramsey, a 1972-74 television series starred Richard Boone as a Sherlock Holmes-type detective in the Old West at the turn of the 20th century.

Blade Runner (1982), a neo-noir science fiction classic set in the future. This comes closest to capturing the spirit of Raymond Chandler's Marlowe with Harrison Ford's sardonic, voice-over narration.

The Name of the Rose (1986), from the Umberto Eco novel, features a 13th-century Sherlock Holmsian monk. The medieval era Cadfael series of television mysteries also took the form of historical fiction.

Angel Heart (1987), set in 1948, begins as a retro detective yarn but soon becomes a supernatural horror shocker. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and the cult TV series of which this is a prequel, also blends murder-mystery forensic work with supernatural horror.

Alien Nation (1988), a murder-mystery police procedural in a science fiction setting. A race of stranded aliens must co-exist with humans on Earth in the near future. The story uses aliens to explore the issues of xenophobia, exploitation, and racism.

Cast a Deadly Spell (1991) is a cable film with gumshoe Harry P. Lovecraft (a reference to horror/fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft) set in a fantasy version of 1948 Los Angeles where sorcery and voodoo abound. This was followed by Witch Hunt in 1994, a mock fantasy/mystery set in 1953. Private eye Lovecraft (Dennis Hopper) uncovers witchcraft and murder in Hollywood.

In My Favorite Brunette (1947), Bob Hope is a cowardly baby photographer who is mistaken for a private detective (played by Alan Ladd in a brief cameo). Later that year, The Bowery Boys released Hard Boiled Mahoney with the same mistaken-identity plot.

Trenchcoat (1983), comedy about a female mystery writer who has to solve a real crime.

Clue (1985), set in 1956, a period-piece whodunit spoof based on the popular board game.

The Singing Detective (1986), a British miniseries about a mystery writer named Philip Marlow who is confined to a hospital bed. There his vivid fantasies of being an old-fashioned gumshoe are brought to life. Later remade as a feature film The Singing Detective in 2003.

In 1987 Robert Mitchum was the guest host on Saturday Night Live where he played Philip Marlowe for the last time in the parody sketch, "Death Be Not Deadly". The show also ran a short film he made called Out of Gas, a mock sequel to his 1947 classic Out of the Past. Jane Greer reprised her role from the original film.

1.
Detective
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A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. Some are private persons, and may be known as private investigators, as The Eye That Never Sleeps, in some police departments, a detective position is achieved by passing a written test after a person completes the requirements for being a police officer. In many other systems, detectives are college graduates who join directly from civilian life without first serving as uniformed officers. Some people argue that detectives do a different job and therefore require completely different training, qualifications. In some countries, the practice of a detective is not yet recognized in courts, one of these countries is Portugal, where the proof presented loses all significance when collected by a private detective. Even under this circumstance, the practice of this activity is in demand, some private detectives also disguise themselves as other people so that no one could recognize them. Before the 1800s, there were few police departments, though the first had been created in Paris in 1667. As police activities moved from appointees helped by volunteers to professionals, the first private detective agency was founded by Eugène François Vidocq in Paris in the early 1800s, who had also headed a police agency in addition to being a criminal himself. Police detective activities were pioneered in England by the Bow Street Runners, the first police detective unit in the United States was formed in 1846 in Boston. Detectives have a variety of techniques available in conducting investigations. However, the majority of cases are solved by the interrogation of suspects and the interviewing of witnesses, besides interrogations, detectives may rely on a network of informants they have cultivated over the years. Informants often have connections with persons a detective would not be able to approach formally, evidence collection and preservation can also help in identifying a potential suspect. Criminal investigation, the investigation of criminal activity is conducted by the police, Criminal activity can relate to road use such as speeding, drunk driving, or to matters such as theft, drug distribution, assault, fraud, etc. In criminal investigations, once a detective has suspects in mind, physical forensic evidence in an investigation may provide leads to closing a case. Forensic science is the application of a spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to the legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or to a civil action, many major police stations in a city, county, or state, maintain their own forensic laboratories while others contract out the services. Detectives may use public and private records to provide information on a subject. Police detectives can search through files of fingerprint records, Police maintain records of people who have committed felonies and some misdemeanors

2.
Private investigator
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A private investigator, a private detective, or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil and criminal cases, official law enforcement tried many times to shut it down. In 1842, police arrested him in suspicion of unlawful imprisonment, Vidocq later suspected that it had been a set-up. He was sentenced to five years and fined 3, 000-francs, Vidocq is credited with having introduced record-keeping, criminology, and ballistics to criminal investigation. He made the first plaster casts of shoe impressions and he created indelible ink and unalterable bond paper with his printing company. His form of anthropometrics is still used by French police. He is also credited for philanthropic pursuits – he claimed he never informed on anyone who had stolen for real need, after Vidocq, the industry was born. Much of what private investigators did in the days was to act as the police in matters for which their clients felt the police were not equipped or willing to do. A larger role for new private investigative industry was to assist companies in labor disputes. Some early private investigators provided armed guards to act as a private militia, in the United Kingdom, Charles Frederick Field set up an enquiry office upon his retirement from the Metropolitan Police in 1852. Field became a friend of Charles Dickens, and the latter wrote articles about him, in 1862, one of his employees, the Hungarian Ignatius Paul Pollaky, left him and set up a rival agency. In the United States, Allan Pinkerton established the Pinkerton National Detective Agency - a private detective agency - in 1850, Pinkerton became famous when he foiled a plot to assassinate then President-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Pinkertons agents performed services which ranged from undercover investigations and detection of crimes, to plant protection and it is sometimes claimed, probably with exaggeration, that at the height of its existence, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than the United States Army. Allan Pinkerton hired Kate Warne in 1856 as a private detective, during the union unrest in the US in the late 19th century, companies sometimes hired operatives and armed guards from the Pinkertons. In the aftermath of the Homestead Riot of 1892, several states passed so-called anti-Pinkerton laws restricting the importation of private security guards during union strikes. Pinkerton agents were hired to track western outlaws Jesse James, the Reno brothers, and the Wild Bunch, including Butch Cassidy. The Pinkerton agencys logo, an eye embellished with the words We Never Sleep, many private detectives/investigators with specialized academic and practical experience also work with defense attorneys on capital punishment and other criminal defense cases. Many others are insurance investigators who investigate suspicious claims, before the advent of no-fault divorce, many private investigators were hired to search out evidence of adultery or other conduct within marriage to establish grounds for a divorce

3.
Evidence
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Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak, the strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions. In law, rules of evidence govern the types of evidence that are admissible in a legal proceeding, types of legal evidence include testimony, documentary evidence, and physical evidence. The parts of a case which are not in controversy are known, in general. Beyond any facts that are undisputed, a judge or jury is usually tasked with being a trier of fact for the issues of a case. Evidence and rules are used to decide questions of fact that are disputed, Evidence in certain cases must be more compelling than in other situations, which drastically affects the quality and quantity of evidence necessary to decide a case. In philosophy, the study of evidence is tied to epistemology. The burden of proof is the obligation of a party in an argument or dispute to provide sufficient evidence to shift the other partys or a third partys belief from their initial position, the burden of proof must be fulfilled by both establishing confirming evidence and negating oppositional evidence. Conclusions drawn from evidence may be subject to criticism based on a failure to fulfill the burden of proof. Two principal considerations are, On whom does the burden of proof rest, to what degree of certitude must the assertion be supported. The latter question depends on the nature of the point under contention, in a criminal trial in the United States, for example, the prosecution carries the burden of proof since the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Similarly, in most civil procedures, the plaintiff carries the burden of proof, other legal standards of proof include reasonable suspicion, probable cause, prima facie evidence, credible evidence, substantial evidence, and clear and convincing evidence. In a philosophical debate, there is a burden of proof on the party asserting a claim. Each party in a debate will therefore carry the burden of proof for any assertion they make in the argument, although some assertions may be granted by the other party without further evidence. If the debate is set up as a resolution to be supported by one side and refuted by another, in scientific research evidence is accumulated through observations of phenomena that occur in the natural world, or which are created as experiments in a laboratory or other controlled conditions. Scientific evidence usually goes towards supporting or rejecting a hypothesis, one must always remember that the burden of proof is on the person making a contentious claim. Within science, this translates to the burden resting on presenters of a paper and this paper is placed before a panel of judges where the presenter must defend the thesis against all challenges

4.
Plot (narrative)
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Plot refers to the sequence of events inside a story which affect other events through the principle of cause and effect. The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a series of sentences linked by, Plots can vary from simple structures such as in a traditional ballad to complex interwoven structures sometimes referred to as an imbroglio. The term plot can serve as a verb and refer to a planning future actions in the story. In the narrative sense, the highlights the important points which have important consequences within the story. The term is similar in meaning to the term storyline, english novelist E. M. Forster described plot as the cause-and-effect relationship between events in a story. According to Forster, The king died, and then the queen died, is a story, while The king died, as a result, according to Dibell, the plot can be described numerically as 1→3 while the story can be described as 1→2→3. A story orders events from beginning to end in a time sequence, teri Shaffer Yamada agrees that a plot does not include memorable scenes within a story which do not relate directly to other events but only major events that move the action in a narrative. Another example of a scene which is not part of the plot occurs in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back. A fabula is the events in the world, whereas a syuzhet is a perspective of those events. Formalist followers eventually translated the fabula/syuzhet to the concept of story/plot and this definition is usually used in narratology, in parallel with Forsters definition. The fabula is what happened in chronological order, in contrast, the syuzhet means a unique sequence of discourse that was sorted out by the author. That is, the syuzhet can consist of picking up the events in non-chronological order, for example, fabula is <a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, …, an>, syuzhet is <a5, a1. He also believed that the events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being necessary or probable. Of the utmost importance is the ability to arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience. Acts are connected by two points or turning points, with the first turning point connecting Act I to Act II. The conception of the structure has been attributed to American screenwriter Syd Field who described plot structure in this tripartite way for film analysis. In his Poetics, Aristotle considered plot the most important element of drama—more important than character, for example. A plot must have, Aristotle says, a beginning, a middle, and an end, of the utmost importance to Aristotle is the plots ability to arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience

5.
Soundtrack
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In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production. Initially the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own track, and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track. A dubbing track is later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as a M & E track containing all sound elements minus dialogue which is supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory. The contraction soundtrack came into public consciousness with the advent of so-called soundtrack albums in the late 1940s and these phrases were soon shortened to just original motion picture soundtrack. More accurately, such recordings are made from a music track, because they usually consist of the isolated music from a film, not the composite track with dialogue. The soundtrack to the 1937 Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first commercially issued film soundtrack. It was released by RCA Victor Records on multiple 78 RPM discs in January 1938 as Songs from Walt Disneys Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and has since seen numerous expansions and reissues. The first live-action musical film to have a commercially issued soundtrack album was MGM’s 1946 film biography of Show Boat composer Jerome Kern, the album was originally issued as a set of four 10-inch 78-rpm records. Only eight selections from the film were included in this first edition of the album, in order to fit the songs onto the record sides the musical material needed editing and manipulation. Needless to say, it was several generations removed from the original, the playback recordings were purposely recorded very dry, otherwise it would come across as too hollow sounding in large movie theatres. This made these albums sound flat and boxy, the phrase is also sometimes incorrectly used for Broadway cast recordings. While it is correct in some instances to call a soundtrack a cast recording it is never correct to call a cast recording a soundtrack, contributing to the vagueness of the term are projects such as The Sound of Music Live. Which was filmed live on the set for an NBC holiday season special first broadcast in 2013, film score albums did not really become popular until the LP era, although a few were issued in 78-rpm albums. Like the 1967 re-release of the film, this version of the score was artificially enhanced for stereo, in recent years, Rhino Records has released a 2-CD set of the complete Gone With the Wind score, restored to its original mono sound. One of the film scores of all time was John Williams music from the movie Star Wars. Many film score albums go out-of-print after the films finish their theatrical runs, in a few rare instances an entire film dialogue track was issued on records. The 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film of Romeo and Juliet was issued as a 4-LP set, as a single LP with musical and dialogue excerpts, and as an album containing only the films musical score

6.
Camera
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Thumb|A2016 Nikon D810 A camera is an optical instrument for recording or capturing images, which may be stored locally, transmitted to another location, or both. The images may be individual still photographs or sequences of images constituting videos or movies, the camera is a remote sensing device as it senses subjects without physical contact. The word camera comes from camera obscura, which means dark chamber and is the Latin name of the device for projecting an image of external reality onto a flat surface. The modern photographic camera evolved from the camera obscura, the functioning of the camera is very similar to the functioning of the human eye. A camera may work with the light of the spectrum or with other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. A still camera is a device which creates a single image of an object or scene. All cameras use the basic design, light enters an enclosed box through a converging lens/convex lens. A shutter mechanism controls the length of time that light can enter the camera, a display, often a liquid crystal display, permits the user to view scene to be recorded and settings such as ISO speed, exposure, and shutter speed. A movie camera or a video camera operates similarly to a camera, except it records a series of static images in rapid succession. When the images are combined and displayed in order, the illusion of motion is achieved, the forerunner to the photographic camera was the camera obscura. The oldest known record of this principle is a description by Han Chinese philosopher Mozi, Mozi correctly asserted that the camera obscura image is inverted because light travels in straight lines from its source. In the 11th century Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham s wrote very influential essays about experiments with light through an opening in a darkened room. The use of a lens in the opening of a wall or closed window shutter of a room to project images used as a drawing aid has been traced back to circa 1550. Since the late 17th century portable camera obscura devices in tents, before the development of the photographic camera, it had been known for hundreds of years that some substances, such as silver salts, darkened when exposed to sunlight. The first person to use this chemistry to create images was Thomas Wedgwood, to create images, Wedgwood placed items, such as leaves and insect wings, on ceramic pots coated with silver nitrate, and exposed the set-up to light. These images werent permanent, however, as Wedgwood didnt employ a fixing mechanism and he ultimately failed at his goal of using the process to create fixed images created by a camera obscura. The first permanent photograph of an image was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles. Niépce had been experimenting with ways to fix the images of a camera obscura since 1816, the photograph Niépce succeeded in creating shows the view from his window

7.
Shadow
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A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a silhouette, or a reverse projection of the object blocking the light. A point source of light casts only a shadow, called an umbra. For a non-point or extended source of light, the shadow is divided into the umbra, penumbra and antumbra, the wider the light source, the more blurred the shadow becomes. If two penumbras overlap, the appear to attract and merge. This is known as the Shadow Blister Effect, the outlines of the shadow zones can be found by tracing the rays of light emitted by the outermost regions of the extended light source. The umbra region does not receive any direct light from any part of the light source, a viewer located in the umbra region cannot directly see any part of the light source. By contrast, the penumbra is illuminated by some parts of the light source, a viewer located in the penumbra region will see the light source, but it is partially blocked by the object casting the shadow. If there is more than one source, there will be several shadows, with the overlapping parts darker. The more diffuse the lighting is, the softer and more indistinct the shadow outlines become, the lighting of an overcast sky produces few visible shadows. The absence of diffusing atmospheric effects in the vacuum of outer space produces shadows that are stark, for a person or object touching the surface where the shadow is projected the shadows converge at the point of contact. A shadow shows, apart from distortion, the image as the silhouette when looking at the object from the sun-side. The names umbra, penumbra and antumbra are often used for the shadows cast by objects, though they are sometimes used to describe levels of darkness. An astronomical object casts human-visible shadows when its apparent magnitude is equal or lower than -4, currently the only astronomical objects able to produce visible shadows on Earth are the sun, the moon and, in the right conditions, Venus or Jupiter. A shadow cast by the Earth on the Moon is a lunar eclipse, conversely, a shadow cast by the Moon on the Earth is a solar eclipse. The sun casts shadows which change dramatically through the day, the length of a shadow cast on the ground is proportional to the cotangent of the suns elevation angle—its angle θ relative to the horizon. Near sunrise and sunset, when θ = 0° and cot = ∞, if the sun passes directly overhead, then θ = 90°, cot =0, and shadows are cast directly underneath objects

8.
Alfred Hitchcock
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Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE was an English film director and producer, at times referred to as The Master of Suspense. He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres and he had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as Englands best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939, and became a US citizen in 1955 and he also fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style. Hitchcocks stylistic trademarks include the use of movement that mimics a persons gaze. In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy and his work often features fugitives on the run alongside icy blonde female characters. Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, Hitchcock later received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours. Hitchcock directed more than fifty films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else, Hitchcocks first thriller, The Lodger, A Story of the London Fog, helped shape the thriller genre in film. His 1929 film, Blackmail, is cited as the first British sound feature film, while Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone and he was the second son and the youngest of three children of William Hitchcock, a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock. He was named after his fathers brother, Hitchcock was raised as a Roman Catholic, and sent to Salesian College, Battersea, and the Jesuit grammar school St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, London. His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry and he often described a lonely and sheltered childhood that was worsened by his obesity. Around age five, Hitchcock recalled that to him for behaving badly. This incident implanted a lifelong fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment, sources vary on Hitchcocks performance in school. Gene Adair reports that by most accounts, Alfred was only an average, or slightly above-average, however, McGilligan writes that Hitchcock certainly excelled academically. When Hitchcock was 15, his father died, in that same year, he left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London. After leaving, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a company called Henleys. Hitchcock joined a regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917

9.
Threat
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A threat is a communicated intent to inflict harm or loss on another person. A threat is considered an act of coercion, some of the more common types of threats forbidden by law are those made with an intent to obtain a monetary advantage or to compel a person to act against his or her will. In all US states, it is an offense to threaten to use a weapon on another person, injure anothers person or property. Brazilian jurisprudence does not treat as a crime a threat that was proffered in a heated discussion, the German Strafgesetzbuch §241 punishes the crime of threat with a prison term for up to one year or a fine. In the United States, federal law criminalizes certain true threats transmitted via the U. S. mail or in interstate commerce and it also criminalizes threatening the government officials of the United States. Threat Death threat Emotional blackmail Extortion Balance of threat Non-credible threat Throffer

10.
Thriller film
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Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a film genre that falls under the general thriller genre. The thriller films key characteristics are excitement and suspense, the suspense element, found in most films plots, is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, a strict definition of the thriller film is that the films overarching goal is to build tension in audiences as the film approaches its climax. Tension is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible, Life is typically threatened in thriller film, such as when the protagonist does not realize entering a dangerous situation. Thriller films characters conflict with other or with an outside force. Thriller films are typically hybridized with other genres, there exist adventure thrillers, science fiction thrillers, Western thrillers, Thriller films also share a close relationship with horror films, both eliciting tension. In plots about crime, thriller films focus less on the criminal or the detective, common themes include terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder. Alfred Hitchcocks first thriller was his silent film, The Lodger. His next thriller was Blackmail, his and Britains first sound film and his notable thrillers in the 1930s include The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps. 326 —this film would be an inspiration for the future James Bond films, the German film M, directed by Fritz Lang, starred Peter Lorre as a criminal deviant who preys on children. Hitchcock continued his suspense-thrillers, directing Foreign Correspondent, the Oscar-winning Rebecca, Suspicion, Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt, notable non-Hitchcock films of the 1940s include The Spiral Staircase and Sorry, Wrong Number. In the 1950s, Hitchcock added technicolor to his thrillers, now with exotic locales and he reached the zenith of his career with a succession of classic films such as, Strangers on a Train, Dial M For Murder with Ray Milland, Rear Window and Vertigo. Non-Hitchcock thrillers of the 1950s include The Night of the Hunter —Charles Laughtons only film as director—and Orson Welless crime thriller Touch of Evil, director Michael Powells Peeping Tom featured Carl Boehm as a psychopathic cameraman. After Hitchcocks classic films of the 1950s, he produced Psycho about a lonely, mother-fixated motel owner, J. Lee Thompsons Cape Fear, with Robert Mitchum, had a menacing ex-con seeking revenge. A famous thriller at the time of its release was Wait Until Dark by director Terence Young, john Boormans Deliverance followed the perilous fate of four Southern businessmen during a weekends trip. In Francis Ford Coppolas The Conversation, a bugging-device expert systematically uncovered a covert murder while he himself was being spied upon, Peter Hyams science fiction thriller Capricorn One proposed a government conspiracy to fake the first mission to Mars. His notable films include Sisters, Obsession, which was inspired by Vertigo, Dressed to Kill. Other films include Curtis Hansons The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Unlawful Entry, detectives/FBI agents hunting down a serial killer was another popular motif in the 90s

11.
Crime
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In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term crime does not, in criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition. The most popular view is that crime is a created by law, in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence is an act not only to some individual. Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law, the notion that acts such as murder, rape and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is an offence is defined by criminal law of each country. While many have a catalogue of crimes called the criminal code, the state has the power to severely restrict ones liberty for committing a crime. In modern societies, there are procedures to which investigations and trials must adhere, usually, to be classified as a crime, the act of doing something criminal must – with certain exceptions – be accompanied by the intention to do something criminal. While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime, breaches of private law are not automatically punished by the state, but can be enforced through civil procedure. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes, authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate certain behaviors in general. In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, and collectively these constitute a criminal justice system, Legal sanctions vary widely in their severity, they may include incarceration of temporary character aimed at reforming the convict. Some jurisdictions have penal codes written to inflict permanent harsh punishments, legal mutilation, usually a natural person perpetrates a crime, but legal persons may also commit crimes. Conversely, at least under U. S. law, nonpersons such as animals cannot commit crimes, the sociologist Richard Quinney has written about the relationship between society and crime. When Quinney states crime is a phenomenon he envisages both how individuals conceive crime and how populations perceive it, based on societal norms. The word crime is derived from the Latin root cernō, meaning I decide, originally the Latin word crīmen meant charge or cry of distress. The Ancient Greek word krima, from which the Latin cognate derives, typically referred to a mistake or an offense against the community. In 13th century English crime meant sinfulness, according to etymonline. com and it was probably brought to England as Old French crimne, from Latin crimen. In Latin, crimen could have signified any one of the following, charge, indictment, accusation, crime, fault, the word may derive from the Latin cernere – to decide, to sift

12.
Puzzle
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A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a persons ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, one is required to put together in a logical way. There are different types of puzzles for different ages, such as puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles. Puzzles are often devised as a form of entertainment but they can arise from serious mathematical or logistical problems. In such cases, their solution may be a significant contribution to mathematical research, solutions of puzzles often require the recognition of patterns and the creation of a particular kind of order. Sometimes not because of how complicated and diagonal the pattern can get, people with a high level of inductive reasoning aptitude may be better at solving such puzzles than others. But puzzles based upon inquiry and discovery may be solved easily by those with good deduction skills. Some notable creators of puzzles are Sam Loyd, Henry Dudeney, Boris Kordemsky and, more recently, David J. Bodycombe, Will Shortz, Lloyd King, the 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary dates the word puzzle to the end of the 16th century. Its first documented use was in a book titled The Voyage of Robert Dudley. to the West Indies, 1594–95, narrated by Capt. Wyatt, by himself, the word later came to be used as a noun. The word puzzle comes from pusle, meaning bewilder, confound, the use of the word to mean a toy contrived to test ones ingenuity is relatively recent. He then used the pieces as an aid to the teaching of geography. After becoming popular among the public, this kind of teaching aid remained the primary use of jigsaw puzzles until about 1820, by the early 20th century, magazines and newspapers had found that they could increase their readership by publishing puzzle contests. The largest puzzle is made by German game company Ravensburger, the smallest puzzle ever made was created at LaserZentrum Hannover. It is only five square millimetres, the size of a dust grain, there are organizations and events that cater to puzzle enthusiasts, such as the World Puzzle Championship, the National Puzzlers League, and Ravenchase. There are also puzzlehunts, such as the Maze of Games, Puzzles can be divided into categories. For example, a maze is a type of tour puzzle, some other categories are construction puzzles, stick puzzles, tiling puzzles, transport puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, lock puzzles, folding puzzles, combination puzzles, and mechanical puzzles. A chess problem is a puzzle that uses chess pieces on a chess board, examples are the knights tour and the eight queens puzzle. Peg solitaire A puzzle box is a puzzle that can be used to hide something — jewelry, rubiks Cube and other combination puzzles can be stimulating toys for children or recreational activities for adults

13.
Murder
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A murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought. This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, manslaughter is a killing committed in the absence of malice, brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, in most countries, a person convicted of murder generally faces a long-term prison sentence, possibly a life sentence where permitted. In many common law jurisdictions, a convicted of murder will receive a mandatory life sentence. In jurisdictions where capital punishment exists, the penalty may be imposed for such an act, however. The modern English word murder descends from the Proto-Indo-European mrtró which meant to die, the Middle English mordre is a noun from Anglo-Saxon morðor and Old French murdre. Middle English mordre is a verb from Anglo-Saxon myrdrian and the Middle English noun, the elements of common law murder are, Unlawful killing through criminal act or omission of a human by another human with malice aforethought. Killing – At common law life ended with cardiopulmonary arrest – the total, with advances in medical technology courts have adopted irreversible cessation of all brain function as marking the end of life. Сriminal act or omission – Killing can be committed by an act or an omission. of a human – This element presents the issue of life begins. At common law, a fetus was not a human being, life began when the fetus passed through the vagina and took its first breath. By another human – In early common law, suicide was considered murder, the requirement that the person killed be someone other than the perpetrator excluded suicide from the definition of murder. With malice aforethought – Originally malice aforethought carried its everyday meaning – a deliberate, Murder necessarily required that an appreciable time pass between the formation and execution of the intent to kill. The courts broadened the scope of murder by eliminating the requirement of actual premeditation and deliberation as well as true malice, all that was required for malice aforethought to exist is that the perpetrator act with one of the four states of mind that constitutes malice. The four states of mind recognized as constituting malice are, Under state of mind, intent to kill, thus, if the defendant intentionally uses a deadly weapon or instrument against the victim, such use authorizes a permissive inference of intent to kill. In other words, intent follows the bullet, examples of deadly weapons and instruments include but are not limited to guns, knives, deadly toxins or chemicals or gases and even vehicles when intentionally used to harm one or more victims. In Australian jurisdictions, the risk must amount to a foreseen probability of death. Under state of mind, the doctrine, the felony committed must be an inherently dangerous felony, such as burglary, arson, rape. Importantly, the underlying felony cannot be a lesser included offense such as assault, as with most legal terms, the precise definition of murder varies between jurisdictions and is usually codified in some form of legislation

14.
Police officer
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A police officer, also known as a policeman, policewoman, police agent, or a police employee is a warranted law employee of a police force. In the United States, the officer is typically the formal name of the lowest police rank. In many other countries, officer is a term not specifying a particular rank. In some nations the use of the officer is legally reserved for military personnel. Police officers may be sworn to an oath, and have the power to arrest people and detain them for a time, along with other duties. Although many police officers wear a uniform, some police officers are plain-clothed in order to dissimulate as ordinary citizens. The word police comes from the Greek politia meaning government, which came to mean its civil administration, Police officers are those empowered by government to enforce the laws it creates. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote If men were angels and these words apply to those who serve government, including police. The more general term for the function is law enforcement officer or peace officer, a sheriff is typically the top police officer of a county, with that word coming from the person enforcing law over a shire. A person who has been deputized to serve the function of the sheriff is referred to as the deputy, a common nickname for a police officer is cop. The term copper is used in Britain to mean someone who captures. The common myth is that its a term referring to the officers buttons which are made of copper. The word Cop derives from a Gaelic word which has the equivalence of saying, protector, leader, the terms are almost nearly homophonic but have similar meanings. The term County Mountie is used specifically in reference to county police officers or county sheriffs deputies in the United States, as with Canadian Mounties, the term mountie comes from police who serve while mounted on horseback. Responsibilities of an officer are varied, and may differ greatly from within one political context to another. Typical duties relate to keeping the peace, law enforcement, protection of people and property, officers are expected to respond to a variety of situations that may arise while they are on duty. Rules and guidelines dictate how an officer should behave within the community, in some countries, rules and procedures dictate that a police officer is obliged to intervene in a criminal incident, even if they are off-duty. Police officers in all countries retain their lawful powers while off duty

15.
Red herring
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A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. A red herring might be used, such as in mystery fiction or as part of rhetorical strategies. The origin of the expression is unknown, the phrase was later borrowed to provide a formal name for the logical fallacy and literary device. As an informal fallacy, the red herring falls into a class of relevance fallacies. Unlike the straw man, which is premised on a distortion of the partys position. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a red herring may be intentional, or unintentional, the expression is mainly used to assert that an argument is not relevant to the issue being discussed. For example, I think we should make the academic requirements stricter for students, I recommend you support this because we are in a budget crisis, and we do not want our salaries affected. The second sentence, though used to support the first sentence, in fiction and non-fiction a red herring may be intentionally used by the writer to plant a false clue that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. The characters name is a loose Italian translation of red herring, in a literal sense, there is no such fish as a red herring, it refers to a particularly strong kipper, a fish that has been strongly cured in brine and/or heavily smoked. This process makes the fish particularly pungent smelling and, with strong enough brine, turns its flesh reddish. In its literal sense as a strongly cured kipper, the term can be dated to the century, in the poem The Treatise by Walter of Bibbesworth. Prior to 2008, the sense of red herring was thought to originate from a supposed technique of training young scent hounds. There are variations of the story, but according to one version, later, when the dog was being trained to follow the faint odour of a fox or a badger, the trainer would drag a red herring perpendicular to the animals trail to confuse the dog. The dog eventually learned to follow the original scent rather than the stronger scent, another variation of the dog story is given by Robert Hendrickson who says escaping convicts used the pungent fish to throw off hounds in pursuit. Ross researched the origin of the story and found the earliest reference to using herrings for training animals was in a tract on horsemanship published in 1697 by Gerland Langbaine. Langbaine recommended a method of training horses by dragging the carcass of a cat or fox so that the horse would be accustomed to following the chaos of a hunting party and he says if a dead animal is not available, a red herring would do as a substitute. This recommendation was misunderstood by Nicholas Cox, published in the notes of another book around the same time, either way, the herring was not used to distract the hounds or horses from a trail, rather to guide them along it

16.
Suspense
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Suspense is a feeling of pleasurable fascination and excitement mixed with apprehension, tension, and anxiety developed from an unpredictable, mysterious, and rousing source of entertainment. The term most often refers to an audiences perceptions in a dramatic work, Suspense is not exclusive to fiction. It may operate whenever there is a perceived suspended drama or a chain of cause is left in doubt, films having a lot of suspense belong in the thriller genre. In terms of expectations, it may be contrasted with mystery or curiosity. Suspense could however be some small event in a life, such as a child anticipating an answer to a request theyve made, such as. Therefore, suspense may be experienced to different degrees, according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his book Poetics, suspense is an important building block of literature. In very broad terms, it consists of having some real danger looming, if there is no hope, the audience will feel despair. The two common outcomes are, the hitting, whereby the audience will feel sorrowful the hopes being realised, whereby the audience will first feel joy. In thrillers, suspense is the key element authors use to leave the reader or viewer hanging, trying to figure out what will happen next, the effect is specially strong when the work ends without actually revealing what happens next in the storyline. Suspense is what gives a person the on-edge feeling, Suspense builds in order to make those final moments, no matter how short, the most memorable. The suspense in a story just keeps the person hooked into reading or watching more until the climax is reached, the tension doesnt have to be in the form of the bad guy stalking the hero. It can be simpler, much less dramatic, but still make the person keep reading or watching. Suspense is about conflict, about the obstacles between the hero and their goal, anxiety Terror Cliffhanger Mystery Plot twist Red herring Adrenaline Baroni, R. Poétique de la discordance narrative, Paris, Seuil, the Nature of Narrative Suspense and the Problem of Rereading, in Suspense. Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations, Mahwah, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Reading for the Plot, Design and Intention in Narrative, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Gerrig, R. Suspense in the Absence of Uncertainty, Journal of Memory and Language, n°28, production de lintérêt romanesque, Paris & The Hague, Mouton. The Effect of Directed Forgetting on Completed and Interrupted Tasks, presented at the 2nd Annual Student-Faculty Research Celebration at Winona State University, Winona MN. Studies in the retention of interrupted learning activities, Journal of Comparative Psychology, vol n°19, phelan, J. Reading People, Reading Plots, Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative, Chicago, University of Chicago Press

17.
Protagonist
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A protagonist is the main character in any story, such as a literary work or drama. The protagonist is at the center of the story, typically makes the key decisions, the protagonist usually affects the main characters circumstances as well, as they are often the primary actor propelling the story forward. If a story contains a subplot, or is a made up of several stories. The word protagonist is used notably in stories and forms of literature and culture that contain stories, in those forms the protagonist may simply be the leading actor, or the principal character in the story. The antagonist will provide obstacles and complications and create conflict that test the protagonist, thus revealing the strengths, the earliest known examples of protagonist are dated back to Ancient Greece. At first dramatic performances involved merely dancing and recitation by the chorus, but then in Poetics, Aristotle describes how a poet named Thespis introduced the idea of having one actor step out and engage in a dialogue with the chorus. This was the invention of tragedy, which occurred about 536 B. C, then the poet Aeschylus, in his plays, introduced a second actor, inventing the idea of dialogue between two characters. Sophocles then wrote plays that required a third actor, euripides play Hippolytus may be considered to have two protagonists. The protagonist of the first half is Phaedra, who dies partway through the play and her stepson, the titular Hippolytus, assumes the dominant role in the second half of the play. In Ibsen’s play The Master Builder, the protagonist is the architect Halvard Solness, the young woman, Hilda Wangel, whose actions lead to the death of Solness, is the antagonist. In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is the protagonist and he is actively in pursuit of his relationship with Juliet, and the audience is invested in that story. The character of Tybalt opposes Romeo’s desires, he is the antagonist, in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Prince Hamlet, who seeks revenge for the murder of his father, is the protagonist. The antagonist would be the character who most opposes Hamlet, Claudius, in the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the character Holden Caulfield is the protagonist. He is the character, and the reader is invested in his story. Sometimes, a work will have a false protagonist, who may seem to be the protagonist, the character Marion in Alfred Hitchcocks film Psycho is an example. A novel that contains a number of narratives may have a number of protagonists, alexander Solzhenitsyns The First Circle, for example, depicts a variety of characters imprisoned and living in a gulag camp. Leo Tolstoys War and Peace, depicts fifteen major characters involved in or affected by a war

18.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view

19.
Sherlock Holmes Baffled
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Sherlock Holmes Baffled is a very short American silent film created in 1900 with cinematography by Arthur Marvin. It is the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyles detective character Sherlock Holmes, the inclusion of the character also makes it the first recorded detective film. In the film, a thief who can appear and disappear at will steals a sack of items from Sherlock Holmes, at each point, Holmess attempts to thwart the intruder end in failure. Originally shown in Mutoscope machines in arcades, Sherlock Holmes Baffled has a time of 30 seconds. Although produced in 1900, it was registered in 1903. The identities of the playing the first screen Holmes and his assailant are not recorded. Assumed to be lost for years, the film was rediscovered in 1968 as a paper print in the Library of Congress. Sherlock Holmes enters his room to find it being burgled. After Holmes recovers his property, the bag vanishes from his hand into that of the thief, at this point the movie ends abruptly with Holmes looking baffled. The film was produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company and was intended to be shown on the Mutoscope, like Thomas Edisons Kinetoscope the Mutoscope did not project on a screen, and provided viewing to only one person at a time. Cheaper and simpler than the Kinetoscope, the system marketed by the American Mutoscope Company quickly dominated the coin-in-the-slot peep-show business. The cards were lit by light bulbs inside the machine. Earlier machines had relied on reflected natural light, Biograph film was not ready-perforated, the camera itself punched a sprocket hole on each side of the frame as the film was exposed at 30 frames per second. Sherlock Holmes Baffled ran to 86.56 metres in length, the director and cinematographer of Sherlock Holmes Baffled was Arthur W. Marvin, a staff cameraman for Biograph. Marvin completed over 418 short films between 1897 and 1911, and was known for filming vaudeville entertainers and he later became known as the cameraman for the early silent films of D. W. Griffith. The identities of the first screen Holmes and his assailant are not recorded, according to Christopher Redmonds Sherlock Holmes Handbook, the film was shot on April 26,1900. Julie McKuras states that the film was released in May of the same year, despite being in circulation, Sherlock Holmes Baffled was only registered on February 24,1903, and this is the date seen on the films copyright title card. The occasionally suggested date of 1905 is probably due to confusion with a Vitagraph film titled Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or, because motion pictures were not covered by copyright laws until 1912, paper prints were submitted by studios wishing to register their works

20.
Mutoscope
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The Mutoscope was an early motion picture device, invented by W. K. L. Dickson and Herman Casler and later patented by Herman Casler on November 21,1894, like Thomas Edisons Kinetoscope, it did not project on a screen and provided viewing to only one person at a time. Cheaper and simpler than the Kinetoscope, the system, marketed by the American Mutoscope Company, the Mutoscope worked on the same principle as the flip book. The individual image frames were conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, rather than being bound into a booklet, the cards were attached to a circular core, rather like a huge Rolodex. A reel typically held about 850 cards, giving a time of about a minute. The reel with cards attached had a diameter of about ten inches. The patron viewed the cards through a single lens enclosed by a hood, the cards were generally lit electrically, but the reel was driven by means of a geared-down hand crank. Each machine held only a single reel and was dedicated to the presentation of a short subject. The patron could control the speed only to a limited degree. The crank could be turned in both directions, but this did not reverse the playing of the reel, nor could the patron extend viewing time by stopping the crank because the flexible images were bent into the proper viewing position by tension applied from forward cranking. Mutoscopes were originally manufactured from 1895 to 1909 by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, in the 1920s the Mutoscope was licensed to William Rabkin who started his own company, the International Mutoscope Reel Company, which manufactured new reels and also machines from 1926 until 1949. The term Mutoscope is no longer a registered trademark in the United States, Mutoscopes were a popular feature of amusement arcades and pleasure piers in the UK until the introduction of decimal coinage in 1971. The coin mechanisms were difficult to convert, and many machines were subsequently destroyed, the typical arcade installation included multiple machines offering a mixture of fare. Both in the days and during the revival, that mixture usually included girlie reels which ran the gamut from risqué to outright soft-core pornography. It was, however, common for these reels to have titles that implied more than the reel actually delivered. The title of one reel, What the Butler Saw, became a by-word. In 1899, The Times also printed a letter inveighing against vicious demoralising picture shows in the penny-in-the-slot machines, similar exhibitions took place at Rhyl in the mens lavatory, but, owing to public denunciation, they have been stopped. Illustration and demonstration of the Kinora Penny Arcade, poem by Jared Carter describes tightrope-walk images viewed through a Mutoscope, media related to Mutoscope at Wikimedia Commons

21.
Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes
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The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television. The four-volumes of the Universal Sherlock Holmes compiled by Ronald B, de Waal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective 221B Baker Street Watson & Holmes, from the Diaries of 221B Three Sherlock Holmes adaptations have appeared in American newspapers. The first, titled Sherlock Holmes, ran from 1930 to 1931, Sherlock Holmes was drawn by Leo OMealia and distributed by the Bell Syndicate. A short-lived half-page Sherlock Holmes comic strip appeared daily and Sunday in the 1950s, written by radio scriptwriter Edith Meiser, the third adaptation Mr. Holmes of Baker Street by Bill Barry appeared in 1976-1977. This adaptation of the detective was not very popular down south. There have been a number of Sherlock Holmes comic books, notably from Dell, the 50th anniversary issue of Detective Comics features a cameo from a 135-year-old Holmes, who congratulates Batman for defeating Professor Moriartys descendants. He explains A proper diet, a distillation of royal jelly developed in my beekeeping days, and the rarified atmosphere of Tibet. When Batman tries to light his pipe, Holmes states Thank you, selfMadeHero published Hound of the Baskervilles, adapted by Ian Edginton and illustrated by Ian Culbard, in May 2009. Holmes is referred to and briefly featured in Alan Moores The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, warren Elliss Aetheric Mechanics is primarily inspired by Sherlock Holreimanmes, while being a mashup of Holmesiana with other contemporary works. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes and The Sussex Vampire,2009 brought the Black House Comics series The Dark Detective, Sherlock Holmes. The series is written by Christopher Sequeira with covers by Academy Award winning artist Dave Elsey, Studios published a four-part series entitled Muppet Sherlock Holmes which featured Gonzo as Holmes, Fozzie Bear as Dr. Watson, and Kermit the Frog as Inspector Lestrade. In 2013, New Paradigm Studios began publishing a monthly, ongoing series entitled Watson, the series re-imagines Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as living in the 21st Century and living in Harlem. It has been estimated that Sherlock Holmes is the most prolific screen character in the history of cinema, the first known film featuring Holmes is Sherlock Holmes Baffled, a one-reel film running less than a minute, made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1900. This was followed by a 1905 Vitagraph film Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or, Held for Ransom, Sherlock Holmes has also been a prolific screen character in foreign language films, such as the Russian 2013 mini-series version broadcast in November 2013. Many similar films were made in the years of the twentieth century, most notably the 13 one-. The only non-lost film is Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerkløer, produced in 1910, Holmes was originally played by Viggo Larsen. Other actors who played Holmes in those films were Otto Lagoni, Einar Zangenberg, Lauritz Olsen, in 1911 the American Biograph company produced a series of 11 short comedies based on the Holmes character with Mack Sennett in the title role

22.
Sherlock Holmes
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Sherlock Holmes is a fictional private detective created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. All but one are set in the Victorian or Edwardian periods, though not the first fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes is arguably the most well-known, with Guinness World Records listing him as the most portrayed movie character in history. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the first detective in fiction and served as the prototype for many that were created later, Conan Doyle once wrote, Each is a root from which a whole literature has developed. Where was the story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it. Conan Doyle repeatedly said that Holmes was inspired by the figure of Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing conclusions from minute observations. However, he wrote to Doyle, You are yourself Sherlock Holmes. Sir Henry Littlejohn, Chair of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, is cited as an inspiration for Holmes. Littlejohn, who was also Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health in Edinburgh, One is thought to be Francis Tanky Smith, a policeman and master of disguise who went on to become Leicesters first private detective. Another might be Maximilien Heller, by French author Henry Cauvain and it is not known if Conan Doyle read Maximilien Heller, but in this 1871 novel, Henry Cauvain imagined a depressed, anti-social, polymath, cat-loving, and opium-smoking Paris-based detective. Details about Sherlock Holmess life, except for the adventures in the books, are scarce in Conan Doyles original stories, nevertheless, mentions of his early life and extended family paint a loose biographical picture of the detective. An estimate of Holmess age in His Last Bow places his year of birth at 1854 and his parents are not mentioned in the stories, although Holmes mentions that his ancestors were country squires. In The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, he claims that his grandmother was sister to the French artist Vernet, without clarifying whether this was Claude Joseph, Carle. Mycroft has a civil service position as a kind of human database for all aspects of government policy. He lacks Sherlocks interest in investigation, however, preferring to spend his time at the Diogenes Club. Holmes says that he first developed his methods of deduction as an undergraduate, his earliest cases, the two take lodgings at 221B Baker Street, London, an apartment at the upper end of the street, up seventeen steps. Holmes worked as a detective for twenty-three years, with physician John Watson assisting him for seventeen and they were roommates before Watsons 1887 marriage and again after his wifes death. Their residence is maintained by their landlady, Mrs. Hudson, most of the stories are frame narratives, written from Watsons point of view as summaries of the detectives most interesting cases

23.
Nick Carter (literary character)
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Nick Carter is a fictional character who began as a dime novel private detective in 1886 and has appeared in a variety of formats over more than a century. The character proved popular enough to headline his own magazine, Nick Carter Weekly, the serialized stories in Nick Carter Weekly were also reprinted as stand-alone titles under the New Magnet Library imprint. By 1915, Nick Carter Weekly had ceased publication and Street & Smith had replaced it with Detective Story Magazine, there was a brief attempt at reviving Carter in 1924–27 in Detective Story Magazine, but it wasnt successful. In the 1930s, due to the success of The Shadow and Doc Savage, since Doc Savage had basically been given Nicks background, Nick Carter was now cast as more of a hard-boiled detective. The first book, Run Spy Run, appeared in 1964, the 100th Killmaster novel contained an essay on the 1890s version and included a short story featuring the character. It marked one of the few times the Killmaster series acknowledged its historical roots, Bill Crider is another author identified with Nick Carter. The Nick Carter name was treated as a pseudonym, and many of the volumes were written in first person, the works were published under the house pseudonyms of Nicolas Carter or Sergeant Ryan. Known authors who contributed include, John R. Coryell Frederick W. Thomas C, harbaugh, who died penniless in the Miami County Home in Ohio. George C. Jenks Eugene T. Sawyer Charles Westerbrook Richard Edward Wormser, stories are also credited to Harrison Keith, the joint pseudonym of John A. L. Chambliss and Philip Clark, who both wrote for the franchise. The character has had a long and varied history, with three countries producing films based on the character. Nick Carter, le roi des détectives, with Pierre Bressol in the title-role, was released in six episodes in late 1908, and enjoyed considerable success. Further adaptations followed with Nouveaux aventures de Nick Carter in 1909, american actor Eddie Constantine played the title roles in the French-made spy films Nick Carter va tout casser and Nick Carter et le trèfle rouge. In one curiously circular and self-referential scene, Constantine as Carter enters a house where he finds a collection of Nick Carter pulp magazines. Both films are unconnected to the Killmaster book series, the actor Walter Pidgeon portrayed the detective Nick Carter in a trilogy of films released by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company. Though MGM purchased the rights to a number of Nick Carter stories. Columbia could not afford the rights to produce a Nick Carter serial, so made one about his son instead, Chick Carter, Detective. In 1972, the actor Robert Conrad made a pilot set in the Victorian era. The Czechoslovakian movie Dinner for Adele is an inspired by Nick Carters pulp magazine adventures

24.
Serial film
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Each chapter was screened at a movie theater for one week, and ended with a cliffhanger, in which characters found themselves in perilous situations with little apparent chance of escape. Viewers had to each week to see the cliffhangers resolved. Many serials were Westerns, since those were the least expensive to film, besides Westerns, though, there were films covering many genres, including crime fiction, espionage, comic book or comic strip characters, science fiction, and jungle adventures. Although most serials were filmed economically, some were made at significant expense, the Flash Gordon serial and its sequels, for instance, were major productions in their times. Serials were a form of movie entertainment dating back to Edisons What Happened to Mary of 1912. Usually filmed with low budgets, serials were action-packed stories that involved a hero battling an evil villain. The hero and heroine would face one trap after another, battling countless thugs and lackeys, many famous clichés of action-adventure movies had their origins in the serials. The popular Indiana Jones movies are a well-known, romantic pastiche of the serials clichéd plot elements, ruth Roland, Marin Sais, Ann Little, and Helen Holmes were also early leading serial queens. Most of these serials put beautiful young women in jeopardy week after week, the serials starring women were the most popular during the silent period but in the sound era few serials had a female character in the major role. Years after their first release, serials gained new life at Saturday Matinees, for that reason, serials are sometimes called Saturday Matinee Serials, even though they were originally shown with feature films. Many have been released in home video formats, besides the hero or heroine, some terms are used to define villains and supporting players, The saddle pal or sidekick was the helper or assistant of the hero or heroine. That person was often a comic or a more serious. The brains heavy was the man who issued the orders to his henchmen and he often wears a suit, and pretends to be an upright, lawful member of the community. He usually had little to do until the last chapter except talk, snarl, the action heavy is the assistant or second-in-command to the brains heavy who usually wore workmanlike duds, did the physical labor, and often had more brawn than brains. He went from one chapter to the next trying desperately to kill the hero with fists, knives, guns, bombs, or whatever else was handy at the time. The oldtimer was the man who owned the ranch, the father of the hero and often had a short lifespan, as well those that wore a badge of a sheriff, marshall. The middle-aged and older performers who were judges, lawyers, storeowners, wardens, owners of the newspaper, scientists, executives. Famous American serials of the silent era include The Perils of Pauline and The Exploits of Elaine made by Pathé Frères, another popular serial was the 119-episode The Hazards of Helen made by Kalem Studios and starring Helen Holmes for the first forty-eight episodes then Helen Gibson for the remainder

25.
Louis Feuillade
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Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films and he is primarily known for the serials Fantômas, Les Vampires and Judex. Feuillade was born in Lunel to Barthélémy Feuillade, a modest wine merchant, just beyond adolescence, he showed a deep interest in literature and created numerous drama and vaudeville projects. His excessively academic poems were published in local newspapers. At twelve he was sent by his parents to a Catholic seminary in Carcassonne and he then began his compulsory military service in 1891 until 1895, when he married Jeanne-Leontine Jaujou on 31 October 1895. After the deaths of his parents, he went to Paris in 1902 seeking literary success, at the beginning of 1905, he started to submit screenplays to Gaumont, and Gaumonts artistic director Alice Guy-Blaché both bought his scripts and invited Feuillade to direct them himself. Concerned about his difficulties and family to support, Feuillade declined the directing job in order to continue working as a journalist. At his suggestion Guy-Blaché hired Étienne Arnaud to direct Feuillades early screenplays at Gaumont, but by 1906 he had gained enough confidence to start directing his own scripts, which were mostly comedies. In 1907 Guy-Blaché moved to the United States and upon her suggestion Feuillade was made Artistic Director of Gaumont. He would work for Gaumont until 1918, while at the time producing his own films, so that by 1925. The Fantômas serial in 1913 was his first masterpiece, the result of a long apprenticeship—during which the series with realistic ambitions, Life as it is, played a major role. It is also the first masterpiece in what the modern critic and he is credited with developing many of the thriller techniques used famously by Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and others. 1906 The Magnitized Man, Le Coup de vent, Le Thé chez la concierge 1907 Tea at the Porters House 1908 The Legend of the Spinner 1910-13 Baby serial, louis Feuillade at the Internet Movie Database

26.
The Artist (film)
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The Artist received highly positive reviews from critics and won many accolades. Dujardin won the Best Actor Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and it was also the first French film to win Best Picture, and the first mainly silent film to win since 1927s Wings won at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. It was also the first film presented in the 4,3 aspect ratio to win since 1953s From Here to Eternity, in France it was nominated for ten César Awards, winning six, including Best Film, Best Director for Hazanavicius and Best Actress for Bejo. The Artist has received more awards than any other French film, in 1927, silent film star George Valentin is posing for pictures outside the premiere of his latest hit film when a young woman, Peppy Miller, accidentally bumps into him. Valentin reacts with humor to the accident and shows off with Peppy for the cameras, the next day, Peppy finds herself on the front page of Variety with the headline Whos That Girl. Later, Peppy auditions as a dancer and is spotted by Valentin, while performing a scene in which they dance together, Valentin and Peppy show great chemistry, despite her being merely an extra. With a little guidance from Valentin, Peppy slowly rises through the industry, two years later, Zimmer announces the end of production of silent films at Kinograph Studios, but Valentin is dismissive, insisting that sound is just a fad. In a dream, Valentin begins hearing sounds from his environment and he decides to produce and direct his own silent film, financing it himself. The film opens on the day as Peppys new sound film as well as the 1929 Stock Market Crash. Now Valentins only chance of avoiding bankruptcy is for his film to be a hit, unfortunately audiences flock to Peppys film instead and Valentin is ruined. His wife, Doris, kicks him out, and he moves into an apartment with his valet/chauffeur, Clifton, Peppy goes on to become a major Hollywood star. Depressed and drunk, Valentin angrily sets a match to his collection of his earlier films. As the nitrate film quickly blazes out of control he is overwhelmed by the smoke and passes out inside the burning house, however, Valentins dog attracts the help of a nearby policeman, and after being rescued Valentin is hospitalized for injuries suffered in the fire. Peppy visits the hospital and discovers that the film he rescued is the one with them dancing together and she asks for him to be moved to her house to recuperate. Valentin awakens in a bed at her house, to find that Clifton is now working for Peppy, Valentin seems to remain dismissive of Peppy having taken him in, prompting Clifton to sternly remind Valentin of his changing luck. Peppy insists to Zimmer that Valentin co-star in her next film, after Valentin learns to his dismay that it had been Peppy who had purchased all his auctioned effects, he returns in despair to his burnt-out apartment. Peppy arrives, panicked, and finds that Valentin is about to attempt suicide with a handgun, Peppy tells him she only wanted to help him. They embrace and Valentin tells her its no use, no one wants to him speak

27.
Les Vampires
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Les Vampires is a 1915–16 French silent crime serial film written and directed by Louis Feuillade. Set in Paris, it stars Édouard Mathé, Musidora and Marcel Lévesque, the main characters are a journalist and his friend who become involved in trying to uncover and stop a bizarre underground Apache gang, known as The Vampires. The serial consists of ten episodes, which vary greatly in length, being roughly 7 hours long, it is considered one of the longest films ever made. It was produced and distributed by Feuillades company Gaumont, due to its stylistic similarities with Feuillades other crime serials Fantômas and Judex, the three are often considered a trilogy. Fresh from the success of Feuillades previous serial, Fantômas, and facing competition from rival company Pathé, upon its initial release Les Vampires was given negative reviews by critics for its dubious morality and its lack of cinematic techniques compared to other films. However, it was a success with its wartime audience. The film has come under re-evaluation and is considered by many to be Feuillades magnum opus. It is recognised for developing techniques, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. It is included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, after waking up in the night, Philipe finds a note in his pocket saying Give up your search, otherwise bad luck awaits you. – The Vampires, and discovers a mysterious passage behind a painting in his room, meanwhile, Mrs. Simpson’s money and jewels are stolen in her sleep by a masked thief, but Philipe is suspected of the crime. Philipe again visits the magistrate, who now believes his case, at the castle, Philipe and the magistrate find the head of Inspector Durtal hidden in the passage in Philipe’s room. Back in the anteroom, they find that Mrs. Simpson is dead and her pocket contains a note from the Grand Vampire saying that he has murdered the real Dr. Nox and is now assuming his identity. Grand Vampire in disguise as Count de Noirmoutier, reads that ballerina Marfa Koutiloff, to prevent her from publicizing the Vampires activities and to deter Philipe, he gives Marfa a poisoned ring before her performance, which kills her onstage. Amidst the panicking crowds Philipe recognizes the Grand Vampire and follows him to a fort and is captured by the gang. They agree to interrogate Philipe at midnight and execute him at dawn, Philipe finds that the Vampire guarding him is one of his co-workers, Oscar-Cloud Mazamette. They decide to work together and capture the Grand Inquisitor when he arrives at midnight and they bind and hood the Grand Inquisitor, and set him up for execution in place of Phillipe. At dawn the Vampires arrive for the execution, but the raid the lair. The Vampires escape, but as they flee they mistakenly execute their own Grand Inquisitor, while faking illness to get off work, Philipe tries to decode a red booklet that he lifted from the Grand Inquisitor’s body, which contains the crimes of the Vampires

28.
Judex (1916 film)
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Judex is the title of a 1916 silent French film serial concerning the adventures of Judex, who is a pulp hero, similar to The Shadow, created by Louis Feuillade and Arthur Bernède. Feuillade had made two serials, Fantômas and Les Vampires, about cunning criminals. Though popular with audiences, the serials both drew criticism for glorifying outlaws, Feuillade answered these concerns by creating the hero Judex, who had the sinister trappings of the flamboyant villains so popular at the time. His secret identity - Judex - was the nom-de-guerre he adopted in his quest for revenge, while Judex was derivative of Fantômas and Les Vampires, its story, with the heros quest for revenge, bore many similarities with The Count of Monte Cristo. The story is complex and is told in 12 chapters, the basic plot involves a corrupt banker named Favraux, who is the target of Judexs revenge. It is eventually revealed that Judexs real identity is Jacques de Trémeuse, complicating matters is Favrauxs beautiful and innocent daughter Jacqueline, with whom the avenger has fallen in love. A final element comes in the form of Diana Monti and her gang who are working at cross purposes with Judex. Judex was played by French matinee idol René Cresté and Diana was played by Musidora, the twelve numbered episodes average 25 minutes in length each. Though Judex was made in 1914, the outbreak of World War I delayed its release and it was finally premiered in December 1916, and subsequently in wider release in 1916-1918. A sequel serial was released in 1918 titled Judexs New Mission

29.
The Perils of Pauline (1914 serial)
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The Perils of Pauline is a 1914 American melodrama film serial shown in weekly installments, featuring Pearl White as the title character. Pauline has often cited as a famous example of a damsel in distress, although some analyses hold that her character was more resourceful. Pauline is menaced by assorted villains, including pirates and Indians, although each episode placed Pauline in a situation that looked sure to result in her imminent death, the end of each installment showed how she was rescued or otherwise escaped the danger. Despite popular associations, Pauline was never tied to railroad tracks in the series, the serial had 20 episodes, the first being three reels, and the rest two reels each. After the original run, it was reshown in theaters a number of times, sometimes in edited, shortened versions, today, The Perils of Pauline is known to exist only in a shortened 9-chapter version, released in Europe in 1916. In 2008 The Perils of Pauline was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The premise of the story was that Paulines wealthy guardian Mr. Marvin, upon his death, has left her inheritance in the care of his secretary, Mr. Koerner, until the time of her marriage. Pauline wants to wait a while before marrying, as her dream is to go out and have adventures to prepare herself for becoming an author. Mr. Koerner, hoping to keep the money for himself. William Randolph Hearst was involved in plot development and he was also present at the premiere at Loews Broadway Theatre, on 23 March 1914. According to The Truth About Pearl White by Wallace E. Davis, E. A. McManus, head of the Hearst-Vitagraph service organization, was the person who proved how successful a serial could be. George B. Seitz tried to follow the pattern of The Adventures of Kathlyn. After retiring from law enforcement, former FBI Director William J, the Whartons also adapted Flynns experiences into a 20-part spy thriller titled The Eagles Eye, starring Baggot. Surviving chapters of Pauline are noteworthy for their unintentionally funny title cards and dialogue captions, filled with misspellings, poor punctuation, terrible grammar and this happened when Pathé, the theatrical distributor, exported the film to France. The film was recut and adapted for use, and all of the printed captions were translated into French. Later, when the American home-movie industry beckoned, the original English titles had been scrapped and these errors have also been blamed on Louis J. Gasnier, director and supervisor of the production. Gasnier, as explained by Crane Wilbur, made linguistic mistakes that confused the French-speaking crew, in either case, current prints of The Perils of Pauline contain these badly re-translated title cards. Thus, in The Pirates Treasure, Pauline detects a time-bomb and says, in the same episode, she spies one of the quaint locals and observes, Here is an original old man

30.
Surrealism
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Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream, leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I, the word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works, after the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the son of writer. He admired the young writers anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition, later Breton wrote, In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most. Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and they began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote The Magnetic Fields, continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin, freuds work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness, as Salvador Dalí later proclaimed, There is only one difference between a madman and me. Beside the use of analysis, they emphasized that one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power, the group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to people from false rationality, and restrictive customs. Breton proclaimed that the aim of Surrealism was long live the social revolution. To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism, in 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire, the other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority

31.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and he is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the countrys earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a difficult life. Poe was born in Boston, the child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year, thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but Poe was with them well into young adulthood, tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money, Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at time that his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with the anonymous collection of poems Tamerlane and Other Poems. With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement, however, Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and he ultimately parted ways with John Allan. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the several years working for literary journals and periodicals. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, in Richmond in 1836, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem The Raven to instant success and his wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal The Penn, Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, a number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre. He was born Edgar Poe in Boston on January 19,1809 and he had an elder brother William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister Rosalie Poe. Their grandfather David Poe Sr. had emigrated from Cavan, Ireland to America around the year 1750, Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeares King Lear, a play that the couple were performing in 1809

32.
Detective fiction
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Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—either professional or amateur—investigates a crime, often murder. Some scholars have suggested that ancient and religious texts bear similarities to what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders, the account told by two breaks down when Daniel cross-examines them. In the play Oedipus Rex by Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, the character discovers the truth about his origins after questioning various witnesses. The earliest known example of a story was The Three Apples, one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade in the One Thousand. In this story, a fisherman discovers a heavy, locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, when Harun breaks open the chest, he finds inside it, the dead body of a young woman who has been cut into pieces. Harun then orders his vizier, Jafar ibn Yahya, to solve the crime, suspense is generated through multiple plot twists that occur as the story progresses. This may thus be considered an archetype for detective fiction, the main difference between Jafar and later fictional detectives, such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, is that Jafar has no actual desire to solve the case. The whodunit mystery is solved when the murderer himself confesses his crime and this in turn leads to another assignment in which Jafar has to find the culprit who instigated the murder within three days or else be executed. Gongan fiction （公案小说, literally：case records of a public law court）is the earliest known genre of Chinese detective fiction, some well known stories include the Yuan Dynasty story Circle of Chalk, the Ming Dynasty story collection Bao Gong An and the 18th century Di Gong An story collection. The latter was translated into English as Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee by Dutch sinologist Robert Van Gulik, the hero/detective of these novels is typically a traditional judge or similar official based on historical personages such as Judge Bao or Judge Dee. Although the historical characters may have lived in an earlier period most stories are written in the latter Ming or Qing period, Van Gulik chose Di Gong An to translate because it was in his view closer to the Western tradition and more likely to appeal to non-Chinese readers. One notable fact is that a number of Gong An works may have been lost or destroyed during the Literary Inquisitions and the wars in ancient China. Only little or incomplete case volumes can be found, for example, One of the earliest examples of detective fiction is Voltaires Zadig, which features a main character who performs feats of analysis. Things as They Are, or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams by William Godwin shows the law as protecting the murderer, das Fräulein von Scuderi, an 1819 short story by E. T. A. Auguste Dupin. Poe devised a plot formula thats been successful ever since, give or take a few shifting variables, Poe followed with further Auguste Dupin tales, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt in 1843 and The Purloined Letter in 1845. Poe referred to his stories as tales of ratiocination, early detective stories tended to follow an investigating protagonist from the first scene to the last, making the unraveling a practical rather than emotional matter. The Mystery of Marie Rogêt is particularly interesting because it is a fictionalized account based on Poes theory of what happened to the real-life Mary Cecilia Rogers

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C. Auguste Dupin
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Auguste Dupin is a fictional character created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poes The Murders in the Rue Morgue and he reappears in The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter. Dupin is not a detective and his motivations for solving the mysteries change throughout the three stories. Using what Poe termed ratiocination, Dupin combines his considerable intellect with creative imagination and his talents are strong enough that he appears able to read the mind of his companion, the unnamed narrator of all three stories. Poe created the Dupin character before the detective had been coined. The character laid the groundwork for fictitious detectives to come, including Sherlock Holmes, Dupin is from what was once a wealthy family, but by a variety of untoward events has been reduced to more humble circumstances, and contents himself only with the basic necessities of life. He now lives in Paris with his friend, the anonymous narrator of the stories. The two met by accident while both were searching for the rare and very remarkable volume in an obscure library. This scene, the two searching for a hidden text, serves as a metaphor for detection. They promptly move to an old manor located in Faubourg Saint-Germain, for hobbies, Dupin is fond of enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics. He bears the title Chevalier, meaning that he is a knight in the Légion dhonneur, Dupin shares some features with the later gentleman detective, a character type that became common in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. He is acquainted with police prefect G, who appears in all three stories seeking his counsel, in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dupin investigates the murder of a mother and daughter in Paris. He investigates another murder in The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and this story was based on the true story of Mary Rogers, a saleswoman at a cigar store in Manhattan whose body was found floating in the Hudson River in 1841. Dupins final appearance, in The Purloined Letter, features an investigation of a letter stolen from the French queen, Poe called this story perhaps, the best of my tales of ratiocination. Throughout the three stories, Dupin travels through three distinct settings. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, he travels through city streets, in The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, he is in the outdoors, in The Purloined Letter. Dupin is not actually a detective, and his motivations change through his appearances. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, he investigates the murders for his personal amusement, however, in The Purloined Letter, Dupin purposefully pursues a financial reward

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Universal Pictures
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Universal Pictures is an American film studio owned by Comcast through the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. The company was founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley and its studios are located in Universal City, California, and its corporate offices are located in New York City. Universal Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America and is one of Hollywoods Big Six studios. Universal Studios was founded by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane, one story has Laemmle watching a box office for hours, counting patrons and calculating the days takings. Within weeks of his Chicago trip, Laemmle gave up dry goods to buy the first several nickelodeons, for Laemmle and other such entrepreneurs, the creation in 1908 of the Edison-backed Motion Picture Trust meant that exhibitors were expected to pay fees for Trust-produced films they showed. Soon, Laemmle and other disgruntled nickelodeon owners decided to avoid paying Edison by producing their own pictures, in June 1909, Laemmle started the Yankee Film Company with partners Abe Stern and Julius Stern. Laemmle broke with Edisons custom of refusing to give billing and screen credits to performers, by naming the movie stars, he attracted many of the leading players of the time, contributing to the creation of the star system. In 1910, he promoted Florence Lawrence, formerly known as The Biograph Girl, the Universal Film Manufacturing Company was incorporated in New York on April 30,1912. Laemmle, who emerged as president in July 1912, was the figure in the partnership with Dintenfass, Baumann, Kessel, Powers, Swanson, Horsley. Eventually all would be out by Laemmle. Following the westward trend of the industry, by the end of 1912 the company was focusing its efforts in the Hollywood area. On March 15,1915, Laemmle opened the worlds largest motion picture production facility, Universal City Studios, studio management became the third facet of Universals operations, with the studio incorporated as a distinct subsidiary organization. Unlike other movie moguls, Laemmle opened his studio to tourists, Universal became the largest studio in Hollywood, and remained so for a decade. However, it sought an audience mostly in towns, producing mostly inexpensive melodramas, westerns. In its early years Universal released three brands of feature films — Red Feather, low-budget programmers, Bluebird, more ambitious productions, and Jewel, their prestige motion pictures. Directors included Jack Conway, John Ford, Rex Ingram, Robert Z. Leonard, George Marshall and Lois Weber, despite Laemmles role as an innovator, he was an extremely cautious studio chief. Unlike rivals Adolph Zukor, William Fox, and Marcus Loew and he also financed all of his own films, refusing to take on debt. Character actor Lon Chaney became a card for Universal in the 1920s

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Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932 film)
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Murders in the Rue Morgue is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film, very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poes short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Bela Lugosi, one year after his performance as Dracula, portrays a lunatic scientist who abducts women, karl Freunds cinematography and Robert Floreys direction have been praised by critics and characterized as expressionistic by Leonard Maltin. Despite the film being pre-Code, violent sequences prompted Universal to cut its running time from 80 minutes to 61 minutes and this film was produced as a compensatory package for Lugosi and Florey, after both were dropped from 1931s Frankenstein. Lugosi had originally been cast as Dr. Frankenstein, and the film was to be directed by Florey, Lugosi was subsequently demoted to play the mute monster, however, which he claimed to have turned down. Florey was replaced as director by James Whale, as producer Carl Laemmle was both unsatisfied with Floreys work on the project, and had given Whale first choice of any Universal property at the time. The box office results for Murders in the Rue Morgue were disappointing, today, however, the film is generally well-regarded by critics and is considered a cult classic. In Paris in 1845, a mad scientist, Dr. Mirakle, abducts young virgin women and injects them with ape blood, both master and servant are enchanted by Camille, whom Mirakle plans to become Eriks mate. He invites her to come and take a look at Erik. Dupin tries to get it back, when Erik tries to strangle him, Mirakle backs him off and offers Camille to replace the bonnet. But Camille is reluctant and suspicious to give the doctor her address, so, one of Mirakles victims, a prostitute, is found dead in a river, and is fished out and taken to the police station. Dupin wants to examine the blood, but the morgue keeper wont allow. A bribe convinces him to some of the blood himself. Dupin discovers in the blood a foreign substance, also found in the blood of other victims, Mirakle visits Camille and asks her to visit Erik again, but when she refuses, he sends Erik to kidnap her. Dupin happens to be passing out of the flat, hears her screams, the police arrive when the ape has already retreated and Dupin is arrested. Neither Madame LEspanaye nor her daughter are found, the police prefect interviews three witnesses, Italian Alberto Montani, German Franz Odenheimer and a Dane. All of them state that they had heard Camille screaming and also someone else talking in a strange language, Camilles mother is found dead, stuffed in the chimney, and her hand clutching ape fur. Dupin points out from the fur that Erik himself may be involved, the police, along with Dupin, run to Mirakles hideout. Before they arrive, Erik turns against his master and strangles him and he grabs Camille when the police arrive and they chase him

36.
Bela Lugosi
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Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, better known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian-American actor, famous for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 film and for his roles in various other horror films. He had been playing small parts on the stage in his native Hungary before making his first film in 1917 and he had roles in several films in Weimar Germany before arriving in the United States as a seaman on a merchant ship. In 1927, he appeared as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stokers novel and he later appeared in the classic 1931 film Dracula by Universal Pictures. Meanwhile, he was paired with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing. To his frustration, Lugosi was increasingly restricted to minor parts, by this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to morphine and methadone. This drug dependence was noted by producers, and the offers eventually dwindled down to a few parts in Ed Woods low-budget movies, Lugosi was married five times, and had one son, Bela George Lugosi. Lugosi was a member of the American Screen Actors Guild. Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugos in the Kingdom of Hungary, not far from Transylvania, to István Blaskó, a banker and he later based his last name on his hometown. He and his sister Vilma were raised in a Roman Catholic family, at the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school. He began his career probably in 1901 or 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theatres in the 1903–04 season, playing roles in several plays. He went on to Shakespeare plays and other major roles, moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theatre of Hungary between 1913–19. Although Lugosi would later claim that he became the actor of Hungarys Royal National Theatre. During World War I, he served as an infantryman in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914-16, There he rose to the rank of captain in the ski patrol and was awarded the Wound Medal for wounds he suffered while serving on the Russian front. Due to his activism in the union in Hungary during the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919. He first went to Vienna and then settled in Berlin in the Langestrasse where he continued acting, eventually, he travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, US as a crewman aboard a merchant ship. He took the name Lugosi, in 1903, to honor his birthplace, Lugosis first film appearance was in the movie Az ezredes. When appearing in Hungarian silent films, he used the stage name Arisztid Olt, Lugosi made 12 films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany

Edward Bonney, an American bounty hunter and amateur detective, from Iowa, in 1845, infiltrated, the "Banditti of the Prairie", wrote the 1850 book, The Banditti of the Prairies: or, The murderer's doom, a tale of Mississippi Valley and the Far West; woodcut from 1850.

Fantômas (French: [fɑ̃tomas]) is a fictional character created by French writers Marcel Allain (1885–1969) and Pierre …

The cover illustration for the first volume of Fantômas, anonymous artist, 1911. A « classic image of the Parisian oneirology », according to the French poet Robert Desnos.

A poster for the third Fantômas serial by Louis Feuillade. Fantômas wears his iconic black hood and black leotard, more sinister features than the traditional gentleman thief's domino mask and tuxedo.

A poster for the first Fantômas serial by Louis Feuillade. In the original illustration for the first Fantômas book cover, the character holds a bloody dagger in his free hand. It was also used for the DVD box cover, but this time Fantômas stamps over a photo of modern-day Paris.

Jean Marais as Fantômas in the 1964 film. In addition to the characteristic face mask, the black gloves of Fantômas are visible.

Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that involves excitement and …

A common theme in thrillers involves innocent victims dealing with deranged adversaries, as seen in Hitchcock's film Rebecca (1940), where Mrs. Danvers tries to persuade Mrs. De Winter to leap to her death.

Photograph of the debut broadcast of the radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, at NBC's Times Square studio on October 20, 1930. The episode, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", starred special guest William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes.

Richard Gordon and Leigh Lovel portrayed Holmes and Watson on the NBC radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical …

Herrings kippered by smoking and salting until they turn reddish-brown, i.e. a "red herring". Prior to refrigeration kipper was known for being strongly pungent. In 1807, William Cobbett wrote how he used red herrings to lay a false trail, while training hunting dogs—an apocryphal story that was probably the origin of the idiom.